What will be future of bubble?

mitchbaylis · 2025-01-25T10:31:02.507Z

the space is moving very fast that’s for sure

these ai builders do have a lot of faults but they are only going to get better

as soon as devs can:

build and edit reliably via chat
own the code
use any backend database (like supabase)
1 click host/scale up/down server needs on s3 easily

then bubble will have very tough competition

currently ai still makes too many mistakes to be reliable, however the most recent chatgpt o1 is a serious level up. if we have that kind of level up every 6-12 months then within 5 years ai will be extremely reliable at low code apps.

we will likely still need some oversight from human devs but I imagine the hours needed would be 20% of current levels. we’ll see a lot of 1 person dev teams leveraging ai builders and a flood of apps for every kind of business/problem.

I also expect monthly SAAS to be largely a thing of the past - no one will need to pay monthly for access to 50 apps when they could just build it themselves. I’m already seeing this with my clients as we roll up dozens of 3rd party apps and rebuild them in their own bubble app.

the only thing gating the ai revolution is energy and possibly regulation (although probably too little too late and too slow to matter).

lindsay_knowcode · 2025-01-25T12:58:04.337Z

Wow that loveable stuff is amazing. I’m using it to build mockups for me right now!

flowforges · 2025-01-25T13:04:07.040Z

I think you haven’t used these tools properly.

flowforges · 2025-01-25T13:07:25.107Z

There are still a lot of faults but still it’s way cheaper than bubble. We can’t export code from bubble and I think this will be the reason most off the founders nowadays choosing AI Coding tools.

We only have 4-5 years to make a lot of money

emir.ozgun · 2025-01-25T13:54:38.418Z

Recently had Chatgpt create an html code for my postmark template, prompt thing is really bad it took me around 30 lines of prompts for very simple html. I don’t know what happens in the future but some sort of glasses is needed thats my thinking to let AI know where I am looking at, I even tried the lines of text and told it like put bottom 12px to number1, put 8 bottom padding to number2, even with that AI had hard time.

akamarski · 2025-01-25T14:07:52.674Z

Have you ever setup a server to run this “your own code” at scale? Everything has a cost once you have real users, let alone the security of the code.

It’s like the to-do apps that you do for yourself and then they are not usable by 10 concurrent users.

Bubble is pretty cheap for what it offers. All those AI app builders that spit out code still require a lot of maintenance + side costs.

flowforges · 2025-01-25T14:08:00.608Z

Did you tried loveable and Bolt?

lindsay_knowcode · 2025-01-25T14:19:56.585Z

flowforges:

Did you tried

Do you know of any other AI tools where I can upload screenshots and have created a Web UI? I am just using it for images in a design doc, so it doesn’t need to be proper code - just saves me creating wireframes (which I am average at anyway more average than an AI tool )

flowforges · 2025-01-25T15:01:49.477Z

To be honest they are still far behind from bubble and it can take years to build a visual editor like bubble but still they are powerful for prototypes and basic MVPs.

So bubble will need to keep adapting otherwise within next 4-5 years no one will even use bubble.

design.agx · 2025-01-25T16:01:56.064Z

I have also been using Lovable and it does a pretty decent job if you prepare your prompts beforehand
Set the database first and then build the UI page by page adding features.

They just launched their figma to lovable and it’s pretty good, and soon you will be able to sync your project with the changes you do in Figma

Also prompting with images of the UI you want, helps a lot to get it right

Delightful · 2025-01-25T18:41:30.221Z

flowforges:

What do you think will be the future?

Bubble will burst as current WF and limitations are non scalable for sure
There. Are plenty of better alternative already and time will make everything clearer.

psycholabdesign · 2025-01-25T20:20:33.901Z

Having looked through lovable doc and tutorials, definitely, you’ll need good prompt input and still will make changes and also connect APIs, DB, and stuff to deploy a live app.
But things are moving quite fast if you look at other builders.

Bubble may be in trouble in some cases but will still be used long into the future. And if they step up the game with reliable performance maybe longer, and with the introduction of mobile and better prompt engineering that can create db setup, design, and logic even more people will be able to build things with natural language.

Again, this month was a bad month for the platform’s reliability. Lost some work due to main cluster issues.

Screenshot 2025-01-25 at 22.13.242170×1540 306 KB

Screenshot 2025-01-25 at 22.13.361198×1494 105 KB

ihsanzainal84 · 2025-01-26T00:36:49.133Z

Tried Bolt and a bunch of AI builders. Great stuff if you’re an experienced developer.

AI deploying stuff for you is great and all but troubleshooting and scaling is going to be a bitch if you don’t understand what the AI has deployed.

Until the day I can use AI to deploy, manage, troubleshoot and scale an app, I won’t be trusting AI to build my serious apps by itself.

flowforges · 2025-01-26T03:33:39.303Z

Let’s see

flowforges · 2025-01-26T03:36:11.443Z

The biggest reason founders are moving from bubble is the bubble pricing

mitchbaylis · 2025-01-26T04:46:07.407Z

I’ve found claude to be the best for prototyping

Vo is also very good

chatgpt seems to be pretty terrible

although the 1o is very good at coding (just doesn’t seem to be that good at canvas - claude still wins out there)

applepatient · 2025-01-30T22:00:41.594Z

hey that is amazing. congrats. I am a beginner bubble dev with zero background in coding. But now at this point, i have grasped a lot of fundamentals about programming, though no hands on experience with coding. I bought a course which teaches you all the fundamentals you need to know to understand and prompt ai to code. IS this a good start? i was gonna go traditional route of html/css, computer science basics, then javascript etc…

But i really want to start making apps using the exact method like you. I do not mind learning or figuring out stuff. So i am curious to know about your journey, your background a little bit if you can share something? Thank you thank you in advance. You will literally save hundreds of hours of time and energy with your response i feel.

fede.bubble · 2025-01-30T22:40:05.035Z

Good to see you decided to continue your discussion from this topic a couple of months back:

Is bubble pricing mode making bubble unsustainable? Questions

Is bubble pricing mode making bubble unsustainable?

Bubble has been working on really cool stuff (like an AI builder and our Mobile apps builder) but I think we could’ve done a better job at advertising and talking about it more. Essentially, “building in public” more. We shared some updates and demos during BubbleCon but we’ve been quiet since. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been coming to work every day.
In the next few weeks you should expect to start hearing more about what we are building as we correct this and start sharing more and also, more often.

My personal take? LLMs are getting cheaper and smarter, and that’s great news for Bubble as we introduce those AI capabilities into our editor. And there’s a lot of truth when app builders when they complain that AI is great for Day 1 building, but not for Day 2 maintenance.

emir.ozgun · 2025-01-30T22:58:58.300Z

AI and mobile was part 2 of new year road map, what about part 1 ? About optimization of the infrastructure for faster reliable db operations ?

bcart0v · 2025-01-31T00:54:19.252Z

Bubble will do fine.

Creating an app with a prompt is great, but if there’s an issue can it fix it? Can you fix it, as you don’t know the code that was generated?

We’re entering a new era of programming, where some Developers know to create code for any framework via any LLM, but couldn’t troubleshoot to save their lives. AI still can’t understand complex apps that work with many different moving parts, and probably won’t for a bit longer and that’s the main job of a Developer, fixing bugs.

Learning the Fundamental’s of programing is key to becoming a good Developer, the more you know about how something works, the easier it is for you to troubleshoot issues or even create new features / apps, regardless if you decided to build it via AI or code it yourself.

I’ve been coding for almost 15 years now, I use LLM’s to do mundane tasks and quick fixes, but I know wrong code when I see it, and most AI’s love to generate code that would never work and confidently tell me it will.